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The human habitats in a
particular geographical space remain confined to a particular social and
production relation. The relation of human being with nature is also determined
by this social relation. This relation is the basic premise of the system of
expropriation of labour. Labour is, first of all, a process between the human
being and nature, a process by which human being through their own actions
mediate, regulate and control the metabolism between themselves and nature. The
needs and capacities of humans as species being are mediated through conscious
activities. These conscious activities come in confrontation with the
constraints of the given social relation. The relentless social and class
struggle against the system of expropriation continues at various dimensions
and levels. The vicissitudes of internal dynamics of social relations under the
overall influence and modulation of global capitalism give rise to social movements
of subaltern classes who are susceptible to the pressure of falling wage rates,
rising unemployment and inequality, environmental degradation and ecological
disaster, social insecurity, lack of civic amenity etc. The institution of
family as the fundamental unit of the social relation and its structure and
character depend on women’s labour. So the revolutionary transformation of the
social movements and the social relations cannot be achieved without a deep
understanding of the nature of expropriation of women’s labour and incorporating
the women’s question in the programme of social movement.

The
participation of women in the movement

Within the ongoing social
movements, there exists ambiguity, lack of clarity and consciousness on the
question of women’s struggle. However, the participation of women and their
militant role in the social movements are increasing day by day. In many
occasions the women workers in India are the main participants in the movements,
because women are the main working force in the sectors like ICDS, health, certain
jobs in IT sectors, big retail outlets, NREG or in the plantation etc. The
issues of social and workers’ rights are raised in those movements through
large-scale participation of women, but the question of women’s liberty as a
class or community remain by and large neglected. The role of women leaderships
in women organizations is mostly confined to the opposition of the physical
oppressions of women. The increasing spate of physical violence on women is
certainly the manifestation of overall degradation of socio-cultural values
under neo-liberal hedonistic milieu. But the confinement of this battle within
the reformation of rule of law amounts to give legitimacy to the hegemonic
class rule and social relation.

During
freedom struggle and within its garb, the principal aspect of women’s struggle
was reformism of patriarchal social practices. The phase of fifties and sixties
passed in social calm and stalemate with the satisfaction of social need
generated during freedom struggle through post independence constitutional
guarantee of equality between men and women and certain legal provisions for
protections against women’s repressions. The women’s question fell into a brown
study of reformist programme even during the upswing of social movements in
seventies and its rejuvenation in the current phase. The confinement within a
narrow boundary is largely due to lack of clarity on both theoretical and
practical premise.

Theoretical impasse

On the
question of women’s liberty, two positions are primarily held. According to
mainstream left opinion, the question of women’s liberty need not be dealt with
separately, because the working class movement by itself will resolve this
issue, formation of women’s organization is needed only to ensure participation
of women in the overarching workers’ movement. The contrary view held by a
section of feminists emphasizes that women should get separately organized
without being mingled with working class movement. The extravagant claim of the
advocates of these two streams of thoughts can be interpreted as the
theoretical impasse in the overall social and workers movements because these
two thoughts do not take family as basic unit of social relation into
consideration. However, feminist consciousness shows how women came together to
articulate previously unspoken but increasingly powerful discontent, and in so
doing created at one and the same time a movement and a theory which radically
disrupted the gender relationship of previous generations. But if the family
labour and social labour are not considered intertwined within the ambit of law
of value and expropriation of surplus value, the importance of formulation of
programme on women’s labour and women’s liberty within the essence of social
and workers’ movement is undermined. In the backdrop of rising social and
working class movement, the Gramsci’s ‘good sense’ rooted in our actual
experience must articulate the question of women’s liberty within the ambit of
mass movement as against the hegemonic ‘common sense’ which tells us how things
are supposed to be and what we supposed to think, feel and do.

Family labour and
Social labour

It is often argued that family labour is valueless
or unpaid because it is not productive labour. It is not productive labour
because it does not pass through commodity value chain or exchanged in the
market. In this logical-structure, the use value and exchange value and in this
sense the family labour and social labour are segregated in two mutually unrelated
space-time continuums. The value of goods produced through family labour even
when not exchanged in the market, is determined by notional familial reckoning.
The notional price of the family products for consumption is less than the price
of the same product for exchange between buyer and seller in the market,
because the prices in market transaction are influenced by transportation
costs, commissions of many intermediaries in the supply chain, the balance
between supply and demand etc. Let us consider an example. The family members
produced a quantity of vegetables in their own field. They used these
vegetables for their own consumptions. The family labour got expended in
cultivation and cooking. Had they not cultivated the vegetables, they would
have purchased these items from the market. They would have opted for market
had the competitive prices of the products in the market are less than the
expenditure incurred for production by the family for own consumption. It means
that the value payment is ingrained in both use and exchange. But the women’s labour like cooking, child
rearing etc within the family are not paid directly. This family labour is also
integrated with the overall social and production relation. Let’s consider a
case of the woman family member who works in a social productive space. This
woman may not have the time to spend for certain aspects of family labour e.g.
cooking or child-rearing. In this situation, she will engage outside labour
(especially of women) as maid-servant for cooking and avail service of child
care centre in exchange of money for child rearing. But the women who are
engaged as domestic maid servants or in child care centres for exchange value of
their labour power will also perform the similar unpaid labour within their own
family for creating use value. Thus depending on market demand of exchange, the
character of family structure as well as the family labour will change. Under
this changed situation, the male members who are engaged in social productive
labour will get further relieved from family labour. This domestic family
labour of cooking, rearing, providing family support system for mental health
etc reproduces the social labour power which is sold to earn exchange value in
the market by both men and women. Two broad divisions are visible in this
changed production relation. In exchange of same value following the rule of
economics, the men have to do only outside labour while women have to do both
outside and domestic labour, on the other hand a small of section women are
getting a part of domestic labour done by other women labour in exchange of
money. Moreover, if the demand created by the need of family to earn means of livelihood
is more than the market demand of women labour, then wages of women’s labour
will be below the value of their labour power and less than the men’s wage. The
regulator and controller of such need within the family is the male member,
because women’s incomes are treated as supporting income, women are not
considered as main bread earner. The participation of women in the labour
market is high in the case of low income group. When men start treating women
as their competitor in the social labour market and as the cause of shrinking
job opportunities, the patriarchal values of considering women as family
centrepieces that should remain within the confine of four boundaries of home,
are strengthened. The undeclared rules of family management or the rules of
contract of marriages determine the forms of women’s labour, and the changes in
the family rules in turn are influenced by the dynamics of production relation.
That’s why the division between women and men’s labour and division within
women’s labour need to be considered while formulating the programme of social
and working class movement.

Marxist Conception

If the basic law of unity of opposites of
dialectical materialism is applied for developing struggling unity among the
working class, the practical formulation of struggle should be ascertained
basing on such internal non-antagonistic divisions. Here the production is also
unity of opposites of social and family labour. In capitalist production, the
value of the product is calculated by adding values of three factors. These
factors are value of labour power, surplus value and value of past or dead
labour. The value of dead labour is the value of that part of means of
production which has been utilised to produce the new product. On the other
hand, the value of these three factors is determined by the average social
labour time expended. The immense women’s labour which is ingrained in the
production and reproduction of labour power of living labour and the production
of past or dead labour remain unaccounted. Women themselves perform the
necessary labour required for reproduction of their own living social labour.
Thus the domestic labour of women not only produces use value for consumption,
but it also produces the exchange value for sale of labour power of both men
and women. So the issues of special rights of women’s labour need to be incorporated
in the revolutionary working class movement.

Indian
reality and movement programme

Let us examine the status of the
women’s labour in India with the help of most reliable NSSO survey report.
According to this report, the participation of women in social labour is more
in rural sector than in urban sector. But this gap is being narrowed down from
mid-2000 due to declining trend of women’s participation in Indian villages.
The agricultural disaster, declining job opportunities etc are the cause of shrinking
social-space for labour primarily of women, and this trend reveals the acute
crisis of rural unemployment despite the ongoing schemes like PMNREGA, ICDS etc.
The decline of women’s participation is also caused due to the huge penetration
of modern implements in the agricultural production. The large-scale eviction from land for construction of SEZ areas is causing loss of
jobs. According to one reliable economic calculation, out of five people who
loses employment from traditional earning source due to such eviction and
displacement to facilitate economic activities of big capitalists, only one
gets reemployed. The participation of women in social production and
empowerment thereof do not take place automatically by the capitalist
transformation of agriculture under competitive pressure of market oriented
demand, rather in certain circumstances women may be pushed back within the
confine of family boundaries. The gap between the number participation of male
and female labour is more in the urban areas than in the rural areas. The
number of women who are losing traditional jobs is proportionately more than
the rate of increase of new labour and as such women are compelled to work with
abysmally low wages. The presence of a huge reserve army of women’s labour is
pulling the wages down to a value below that of labour power in the sectors
like health service, child rearing, NREGA, plantation etc where women are
primarily employed. The women are primarily engaged in informal sectors and as
such they are also deprived of legal social and labour security. As per NSSO
survey report 2011-12, the average daily wages for female workers in organized
and unorganized sectors are Rs. 481.90/- and 120.30/- respectively and that of
male workers are Rs.632.20/- and Rs. 194.20/- respectively. The state-wise data
shows that the participation of women in social labour is highest in NE India
and least in North India. The state-wise data reveal that the patriarchal value
does have an influence over the participation of women in social labour, and
the capitalist transformation of relations of production by itself does not
weaken the patriarchal value system. Both in pre-capitalist and capitalist
relation of production women are workers within the bounds of family and are
twice expropriated both within and outside family bounds when they participate
in social production. The domestic labour not only creates use value, but also
reproduces the labour power of male and female members by making it worthy for
exchange in the labour market for exchange value. The owners of the means of
production expropriates surplus value of both forms of women’s labour by means
of a stratified wage structure, and thus create a labour aristocracy who stand
in favour of giving legitimacy to the system of expropriation of labour. Consciously
or unconsciously, a small section of woman in the elite and middle class falls
in this trap, and it does not make much difference whether they are for or
against any reform.

Women’s liberty from two forms of oppression is intertwined
with women’s freedom of right over their own body. This freedom can be obtained
by leading struggle against patriarchy and male hegemony in the realm of the
institution of family. But this struggle is not autonomous struggle as
envisaged by a section of feminists. Without the militant struggle for just
wages in social labour, equal wages for both male and female, creation of job
opportunities and social security for women, the feminist movement against the
patriarchy and even the working class movement cannot be victorious. The
struggle against patriarchy must be primarily launched within the women who are
participating in the social labour, within their own space and organizations
because they are simultaneously oppressed both in social space and family
space. And the participation of male workers in this struggle must be ensured
to build greater working class unity.